Ok last weekend was the Assault on Imdaar Alpha tournament. I took this list:
100 Pts
Chewie
Gunner
Recon Dude
Draw Their Fire
Falcon
2 x Gray Squad Y-wings
Blaster Turrets
It is a solid list with a lot of health and 360 degree fire with three attacks.
Drawbacks?
Chewie is a huge freaking target and in the heat of battle I forgot to use Draw their fire in a game where it would have meant the difference between victory an defeat. (Game vs 7 ship Howlrunner swarm and it came down to literally the last roll of the dice.)
Y-wings are severely limited if you bump and can't focus for the B-turrets. Plus that focus can't be used defensively if you put it in the turret, not that 1 agility would really make the best use of focus but hey every bit helps.
My two loses where to:
A Howlrunner mini swarm of five ties and a shuttle with vader.
A 6 ship Howlrunner swarm with Dark Curse flanking
So I have taken the week to ask myself this question. in those two games where did I go wrong?
Cody gave me some excellent advice for dealing with a swarm after I played him and pointed out two mistakes that I made that ended up being critical.
1. Live on the Edge.
Swarms need to swarm around you an get in your way. They force you onto rocks or to bump into them. thereby losing your actions. Most of the swarm is PS 1 so this is not hard to do since they go first.
Staying on the edge forces them into limited maneuvering options and hampers the swarms ability to be annoying. It forces the Joust which the swarm will lose usually if you can focus down ships quickly.
2. Kill Howlrunner
Howlrunner is key to the swarms firepower. With her re-rolls it increases the TIEs mediocre two attack dice to basically 2.5 or 3 dice effectively. She is the lynch-pin, the key-stone the glue that keeps the swarm together. Kill her early and it will change the game.
3. Rock Placement
Place your rocks to form an alley on the side of the board you want to hug. This will interfere with the swarm and maybe cause some damage when they try to come and get you. You should be moving up an down the board using K-turns to set up another jousting pass.
4. Formation is key.
Formation is key for both sides. Try to maintain yours to maximize your abilities and force your opponent to focus on non-critical ships in your squads. So for me I needed to shield Chewie from fire with the Y-wings so he could draw off crits and spread the damage around keeping more ships into the fight.
If you can disrupt the swarm through maneuvering or killing Howlie then you have a good chance of breaking the swarm into easily digestible chunks.
Even with the new ships like the Defender and the Phantom you will still see swarm lists and they will still be competitive because they bring a lot of health, lots of targets, and aggregate firepower that can wear your biggest ships down eventually especially if they only have one agility.
Future of the Swarm?
I see five ship Howlie swarms supported by Shuttles, Bounty Hunters and most especially the new Defenders and Phantoms which make great flankers.
Howling Echo
Howlrunner
5 x Academy noobs
Echo in Phantom with Advance Cloaking Device
Howlie and friends do what they do best while Echo picks off the stragglers.
Howlie's Gang
Howlrunner, Swarm Tactics, Targeting Computer
5 x Academy noobs
Delta Squad Defender
Six ship swarm, Howlie swarms the Defender and uses target lock to re-roll her own attacks maximizing her firepower.
No comments:
Post a Comment